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Sealed work
The term of "Sealed work" ' (封印作品) refers to a piece of media that has been prevented from being released or re-released due to controversy or other reasons inherent in its content and existence. It and the similar term "missing number" are often used to denote what episodes of anime or chapters of manga have become missing, banned, or unavailable to be circulated further. Overview A work can be considered "sealed" in slang when it does not re-appear for various reasons: *The publisher and author may have a dispute over rights issues related to the series. *The masters of an episode or manuscript to the manga have become damaged, destroyed, or lost. *It is out of print due to regulation of laws, or voluntarily restricted. *Discriminatory terms or content were displayed, and may be considered unethical if they were to be shown again. *Copyright infringement or disrespect of of other series via parodies that the original rightsholders take objection to. *There is content that causes unrest in light of similar events happening, such as natural disasters or criminal cases. *A member of a production team, such as a voice actor or director, is arrested or winds up in a scandal. Works that encountered issues related to copyrights or discrimination may still wind up re-released with edits, with the revised version becoming the standard one available. However, others may wind up permanently unseen just as in other scenarios. An author may also self-censor their work, fearing controversy and wanting to make sure to appease their audience. While a number of these examples below will be relevant to Osomatsu itself, it is also worth noting other known works that have become infamous for becoming banned or lost due to any of the above circumstances. Examples of "sealed works" in ''Osomatsu-kun and Osomatsu-san *The 1966 anime could be considered an early example, due to the film masters having gone missing after early 1970s rebroadcasts. Though they were eventually recovered, the damage to the film is noticeable and MBS did not retain all reels for the ending credits. *Numerous Shogakukan grade school magazine chapters (eg: Kindergarten, 1st Grade, 2nd Grade, 4th Grade) and other Osomatsu-related stories have not been reprinted since their original serialization, either due to oversight, missing manuscripts, or issues with them having been more obviously handled by Akatsuka's assistants. There is no official reason why they are missed out in reprints, although the Fujio Pro FAQ warns that "complete editions" of his manga aren't always necessarily truly complete. *In a particular example to the above, the chapter "The Story of the Sextuplets' Sea Bath" from the August 1, 1965 Shonen Sunday appendix booklet that came with the issue has never appeared in reprints. In fact, a much later Shonen Sunday feature from 1966 (involving a Spy Vs. Spy parody with the -kun characters) being lumped in with the other -kun stories from that very issue in certain reprints lead eBookJapan to believe that it too originated from that same magazine instead of its proper place and year. *Chapters of the Shonen King, Comic Bombom, and TV Magazine runs of -kun were considered this for some time either due to copyright concerns or due to violence and potentially discriminatory depictions (in the case of the Shonen King run). This is still the case for many physical reprints, although the eBookJapan digital volumes have these chapters available. *Episode 1: Osomatsu-kun Returns, the first episode for -san, was announced to be removed from streaming services and not released on home video, with the only statement being that it was due to decisions by the production committee. The large amount of parodies within the episode leads to speculation that rightsholders for some of the properties may have taken issue, as seen in a following incident with the anime: **The "Dekapanman" skits in episode 3 were initially censored and altered for satellite TV rebroadcasts due to viewer complaints over the rude parody of Anpanman, and an apology and statement by the TV Tokyo president for the offense. It was then decided to entirely remove the skits from the episode for home video releases. A post-episode live-action skit titled "Real Matsu" now fills in the runtime that was cut. The "OAW" skits were also re-titled "OSO" (perhaps due to the parody of the SAW logo), and the change is retained for home video. Other Akatsuka Examples The Genius Bakabon * Similar to the examples with -kun's BomBom and TV Magazine chapters, this was also the case for some stories from Akatsuka's relaunch of Bakabon around the time. They do, however, appear in the eBookJapan edition and some Kodansha reprints. * The entire 1988-1989 Monthly Shonen Magazine run of Bakabon is usually considered to fall under "sealed" for various reasons, with only a few select stories having made it out to an "Unreprinted Treasures" collection of rare chapters and one-shots. The entire run in itself has never been digitized for eBookJapan or reprinted in full to start, due to the amount of stories containing violent or otherwise objectionable content and parodies and crossovers with other authors' works (such as a chapter where Bakabon's Papa is seen having sex with Luna-sensei from Sumiko Kamimura's controversial Watch Out! Luna-sensei). Extraordinary Ataro * Perhaps due to the "child in danger" element of the story or for other undisclosed reasons, the chapter "Ataro Has Died" never appeared in physical reprints of the series and was first unsealed via the 2009 eBookJapan edition. A physical reprint of it finally appeared in the Coredeiinoda! Akatsuka retrospective book set in 2018, as part of the "Rarities" collection. Others * Akatsuka's 1980-1981 gag manga Caster ''ran in Kobunsha's Popcorn magazine, but quickly became controversial due to depictions of cannibalism and other dark themes. After the cannibal restaurant story in chapter 2 caused Kobunsha to issue an apology for the depictions, and Marvel Comics pulled out of the contract with the magazine, ''Popcorn itself and its features were all ceased at the sixth issue (with Marvel's Japanese-translated comics having stopped at the second one). To this day, the manga in question has still not been reprinted in any Akatsuka "Complete Works" collections or been digitized for eBooks. At the time of its creation, Akatsuka had stated his opinion of manga having become boring due to taboos being established, and that this series had his full responsibility. * The second Dayon Shonen Book short, Horahora no ojisan, has not appeared in any reprints after the 2002 Shogakukan DVD-ROM set presumably due to Osamu Tezuka's character of Big X appearing in its frontispiece. * Though it appeared in the "1960s" DVD-ROM book in the above set, Akatsuka's adaptation of Hal Roach's Our Gang shorts, titled "The Little Kid Gang", was excluded from the 1960s compilations for eBookJapan likely due to copyright concerns as well. * Aside from the two times that the Nyarome's Fun Math Classroom book made it to reprint, the Nyarome learning book series is considered officially sealed due to "various circumstances" involving rightsholders (and likely Kunio Nagatani's involvement in having been the writer). Requests for the reprint site Fukkan.com to republish these books have met with failure after initial consideration. Other Notable Examples (non-Akatsuka) Anime *The 1973 Nippon TV version of Doraemon went missing due to the bankruptcy of the company behind it, and only half of the series' films were later recovered in the 1990s. *The entirety of Candy Candy, both the manga and the anime adaptation, cannot be republished due to a dispute by the author Kyoko Mizuki and the artist Yumiko Igarashi. *The 38th episode of Pocket Monsters, aka Pokémon, was titled "Electric Soldier Porygon" and featured a sequence of flashing lights that triggered seizures in young children that viewed it. The episode was thus banned from re-release, and strobe effects in the anime were toned down. **As far as international releases go, though episodes with Jynx originally aired without incident, an article accusing the character of being a blackface depiction later influenced 4kids to not dub further episodes featuring the Pokemon such as "The Ice Cave!" (episode 252) until her design was modified for the anime. **The episodes "Holiday in Aopulco" (episode 18) and "Legend of Miniryu" (episode 35) were banned from the English dub initially, the former due to depiction of James wearing a bikini with fake breasts and the latter due to the depiction of firearms. Though episode 18 later aired with extensive edits as a special "lost episode" promotion by Kids WB, it was not retained for home video releases. **"Battle of the Quaking Island! Dojoach vs. Namazun!!", the 377th episode of the series, was removed before its broadcast due to the Chuetsu earthquake, as the Earthquake move was used in the episode. It never received a home video release or was imported to other countries. **Episodes 682 and 683 were to be a two-parter titled "Team Rocket vs. Team Plasma!", but were postponed from airing due to the 2011 Tohoku earthquake and scenes of destruction in the episode that may have been insensitive to such a disaster. Though there were plans to air them at a later date, these did not come to pass and some footage from the episodes wound up recycled for later stories. **Episode 1005 was banned from being broadcast outside Japan, due to a depiction of Ash painting his face dark to mimic a Passimian, in a manner that would suggest blackface. **The opening short to the third movie, "Pikachu and Pichu", was removed from home video releases and reruns of the movie after the narrator Noriko Sakai's 2009 drug arrest. *''Ghost Stories third episode was originally to be "Am I Beautiful? The Kuchisake-onna" and deal with the mythical demon, but complaints sent to Fuji TV by concerned parents resulted in it being pulled before it could be broadcast (as the parents were worried about her deformed mouth being insensitive to those with cleft palate disorder). The episode has never been released on home video as well. *The Jojo's Bizarre Adventure OVA adaptation (covering "Stardust Crusaders") was taken out of circulation in 2008, due to controversy over the presence of the Quran being read by DIO. *''Jojo's Bizarre Adventure: Phantom Blood'', a 2007 film adaptation of the Jojo's Bizarre Adventure manga, was never released to home video. It is thought this could be due to the issues of the original OVA being taken out of circulation, but it is also theorized that Hirohiko Araki may have not liked the changes made in the adaptation. *The anime version of Love Warrior Rainbowman was never re-released due to creative disputes between the rightsholders to the anime and the original tokusatsu show. *The 1998 Toei Animation adaptation of Yu-Gi-Oh was sealed after a few VHS releases and has never been released to DVD, owing to the sponsor being Bandai, a rival of Konami (who would be the sponsor behind later Yu-Gi-Oh projects). *The original Kaiketsu Zorori OVA from 1989 and the 1993 film have never been re-released, as they were considered flops. *Due to the anime adaptation of Shinji Wada's Pygmalio being disliked by the author, he refused to let video plans happen for the series and he revoked the rights for his works to be adapted by any other studios. *The anime adaptation of Shotaro Ishinomori's Miracle Giants Dome-kun had a few VHS releases, but according to the anime director Takashi Watanabe, any further home release is not possible as the masters for the series were destroyed in a flood at Studio Gallop's warehouse. This may have also been the fate of other Gallop-adapted works around the time like Tatsuhiko Yamagami's Gakideka, as they too have never had home video release. *DVDs of Musashi Gundoh only reached up to episode 8 before the home video release was suspended, however, a release of all the episodes did occur overseas in France. Manga *Fujiko Fujio's manga of Q-taro the Ghost appeared to be this in recent times, owing to various reasons including the multiple rights issues involved with the different Studio Zero artists who helped as assistants, the falling-out of the Fujiko Fujio duo and Hiroshi Fujimoto (Fujiko F Fujio)'s wife not approving of a re-release, and discriminatory content. However, it has seen reprint via eBookJapan since 2015. *A number of early chapters of Crayon Shin-chan (1, 2, 3, 6, 7, 11, 12, 13, 14, 17, 62) have not been reprinted due to objectionable content or the character designs being too rough in quality. *The 28th chapter of Osamu Tezuka's Black Jack, titled "Finger", was never reprinted due to Tezuka re-working it later on as the 227th story "Print Proof". Chapter 41, "The Human Vegetable", was withdrawn from later editions of Shonen Champion vol.4 due to the controversial issue of brain death and vegetative states raised in the plot. Chapter 58, "Pleasure Seat", was banned due to its plot involving lobotomy. Chapters 171 and 209 are considered "semi-sealed"; only being rarely reprinted. *''The Dirty March'', a 1972 Tezuka one-shot, has been banned and never reprinted due to its discriminatory terms and the depiction of a mentally-ill protagonist. *''Radioman'', a 1992-1994 manga by Yoshito Asakiri, was banned due to its dark comedy and flippant depictions of nuclear power. While fans have voted for the reprint site Fukkan to republish it as volumes, such releases have been indefinitely postponed. *The original manga tie-in of The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya that ran in Monthly Shonen Ace was considered this due to the artist's ties to erotic doujinshi of the characters, and while some of the earlier chapters had been reprinted in a tankobon, the final three chapters never were. *''Allah'' by Go Nagai, a series that ran in Bokura from August 1968 to October 1969, became this when it was considered to be an insulting act against Islam. *''Madman Army'', by Fujiko Fujio A, was a manga revolving around a baseball team full of mentally handicapped characters and ran in Shonen Champion from September 3rd, 1969 to March 18, 1970. However, due to it being considered offensive to those with disabilities, its serialization cut off and its existence was sealed. *The "Immigration" arc of Shotaro Ishinomori's Cyborg 009 originally had the revelation that nuclear war had caused physical deformities in the humans of the future (originally from 1983 but bumped to a "200X" in later printings), causing humans to either be missing limbs or bearing extra digits, or even having mutated to have animalistic features. Because this was deemed insensitive in light of atom bomb survivors who'd been deformed by World War II, this detail was extensively modified in later reprints to instead state that the radiation had mutated plants and animals to attack and deform humans (though some other elements, such as the time agents with tentacles, still remain unaltered and unexplained), and various panels were redrawn or edited. The original version has never been brought back into circulation. *Ishinomori's Road of Ryu encountered much similar controversy and censorship for reprints, where the monsters that Ryu would fight were actually humans and animals mutated by nuclear radiation fallout and pollution, and some had burnt flesh and otherwise horrific but superhuman deformities. In the reprints, their appearances were toned down and the official explanation was changed to them being humans and animals that had been attacked by a radiation-plagued monster. Originally, it was also explained that China was the country responsible for starting the nuclear war, but this too was altered. The pre-tankobon edited version of Ryu is considered to be impossible to ever be reprinted uncensored, with all these implications in mind. *Earlier manga adaptations of Pokemon, especially those made prior to the establishment of POKEMON COMPANY LTD. (which set forth its focus on being more family-friendly and universally appealing), have been sealed due to having inappropriate humor inconsistent with an "international family-friendly" image, be they jokes revolving around genitals, bodily functions, sex appeal, black humor, or anything else too crude. The content of the ongoing series Pokemon Special was also toned down over time due to this edict (though the Viz Media English language release has censored some objectionable content further). *The 98th chapter of Chibi Maruko-chan, "Maruko Thinking About Dreams", was not collected into the series tankobon release as Momoko Sakura expressed wanting to remake the chapter in a better style though this never did happen. Live Action * The twelfth episode of Ultra Seven, "From a Planet with Love", has not been rebroadcast since the 1980s and has been withheld from home video releases due to the design of the Alien Spell causing controversy for its scarred appearance being reminiscent of an atomic bomb survivor, and thus upsetting survivors who were already discriminated against for their appearance and status. * Thunder Mask cannot be re-released due to disputes between its production companies, along with the fact the show masters are in too poor of a condition to be usable. * The 1977 film adaptation of Kochikame was only released on VHS once in 1980, but has not appeared further due to a notorious reputation and apparently displeasing Osamu Akimoto. * The original versions of two episodes of Car Ranger were left unreleased and were heavily re-worked for broadcast, due to the enemy being a parody of Mazinger Z and looking too close to such a robot. Category:Real Life